Atheists, atheists, atheists

I encountered Jim Holt's review of Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" in The New York Times last week. A couple days ago a friend pointed me to Gary Wolf's story, "Battle of the New Atheism," in the latest issue of Wired. Then last night, flipping through Newsweek, I found Lisa Miller's article on Sam Harris, "the atheist."

The anti-religion rhetoric may shock some, as no doubt some religious rhetoric disturbs some agnostics and atheists -- along with a few people of faith.

In the midst of it, Wolf seems to find a middle way.

Refusing the call to war against faith, he writes: "Even those of us who sympathize intellectually have good reasons to wish that the New Atheists continue to seem absurd. If we reject their polemics, if we continue to have respectful conversations even about things we find ridiculous, this doesn't necessarily mean we've lost our convictions or our sanity. It simply reflects our deepest, democratic values. Or, you might say, our bedrock faith: the faith that no matter how confident we are in our beliefs, there's always a chance we could turn out to be wrong."